Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Tuesday April 13, 2010 @11:49AM
from the hello-computer dept.

crimeandpunishment writes "Paramount Pictures is trying to live long and prosper by selling Seagate Technology hard drives with the latest Star Trek movie on board ... along with 20 other films. The 500GB hard drive will sell for a special promotional price of $100. It's the latest way for Hollywood to combat falling DVD sales due to piracy."

They also come loaded with a DRM system that will probably function like a virus or some form of malware to not only make it impossible to watch these movies without calling into the server, but also possibly scanning your system for other Paramount movies and either deleting them or reporting you to the MPAA. They could include 100 movies and it still wouldn't be worth it to have something like that lurking around on my system.

Frankly, I would have more trust in a hard drive I bought from a sleazy-looking dude with a Russian accent hanging on my local street corner. And Sergey is not very trustworthy.

He wasn’t. He was referring to the Amazon referral program. The ?ref, on the other hand, was referring to the HTTP referer header to which you referred, which was referring to the word “referrer” but designed by people who couldn’t be bothered with referring to a dictionary.

That $140 figure was probably the price when someone thought up the promotion. By the time it got through all of their bureaucratic muckity-muck, they're putting an overpriced device on the market.

That's almost as bad as our local Wal-Mart. They have a Battlefield 2142 gaming mouse in their clearance section. It has been on clearance there for over two years (and was likely on the shelves for two years prior to that point), and they still have the price at around $69. Retailers (and, apparantly, movie studies) have a mistaken notion that tech gear holds its value over time.

Actually I was referring to Amazon's referal program where I was released back into the Amazon jungle and accepted by a pack of developers. In time I relearned their ways and mated with their women. As fate would have it, Amazon had only deferred their deferal program and as soon as it went back into effect I took advantage of it and here I am clean and shaven--almost fully capable of using a keyboard again!